Jordan Hoffman Dot Com

If Cassavetes invented jazz cinema with “Shadows,” Resnais fired back with the invention of grand atonal symphonic cinema in “Last Year at Marienbad.” It is a beautiful film — it is an infuriating film. Pauline Kael called it a hoax and Woody Allen’s character in “Manhattan Murder Mystery” thought it a bore. It isn’t exactly entertainment, and while it threatens, at times, to be boring, it is mesmerizing. I’m gonna quote a man named Matthew Wilder who really nailed it in his blurb on the imdb, “But there remains an astounding mixture of total abstraction and heady sensuality in Resnais’ hypercontrolled style, in which every nicety of framing and speed of camera movement seems dictated from a cloudbound meeting of the gods. The novelist-screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet’s metaphysical riddle–did or didn’t the lovers meet last year at Marienbad?–is left open to the audience’s contemplation by Resnais, who turns the baroque surfaces of the movie’s pricy world into a smooth, flat plane that evokes the paintings of Mondrian.” The creepy haunted house music, which plays under 95% of the film, doesn’t hurt in creating mood, either. Everyone interested in cinema, art in general (”Marienbad” belongs more at the Whitney than at Loews) or those old Calvin Klein commercials owes it to themselves to watch at least 45 minutes of this film. I won’t strap anyone down to watch the rest, as there’s really no advance in story or plot, and you really can check out of this hotel whenever you wish.